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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'You&apos;ve just got to watch out for those evil olives.',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/03/02.jpg" alt="The path widens" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I wasn&apos;t aware of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.
			It looks like businesses can keep tabs on what they have to say to make sure they stay compliant with laws.
			That&apos;s good to know!
		</p>
		<p>
			I agree that long passwords should always be used, when possible.
			I use 64-character random strings as my passwords when I&apos;m allowed to.
			However, not all sites involved with cards allows this.
			In my country, Bank of America and Selco only allow up to 20-character passwords, Banner Bank and First Tech only allow up to 12-character passwords, Chase; Discover; and Oregon Community Credit Union only allow up to 32-character passwords (32 characters is probably &quot;enough&quot;), and many of these companies place limits on which characters are even allowed in passwords, showing that the passwords probably are stored in the database unhashed.
			And those are just the financial institutions I have notes on in my password manager.
			I don&apos;t even have accounts at all these places any more, due to the terrible security in other parts of their systems.
			For example, Bank of America&apos;s security is absolutely atrocious, and if you care about your money, I wouldn&apos;t get an account there.
			First Tech has security problems as well.
			There&apos;s also the merchant websites, that also don&apos;t allow users to provide long, secure passwords.
			Passwords are important to security, and businesses (including the banks and credit unions) aren&apos;t allowing users to do what it takes to be safe.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		Today, I read the story of a vineyard with olive trees.
		I&apos;m not sure what they were doing in a vineyard, as trees aren&apos;t vines, but maybe it&apos;s common to grow trees alongside your vines.
		I wouldn&apos;t know, and as it&apos;s not much relevant to the story, I didn&apos;t bother to look it up.
		Anyway, this story is presented in the book of Jacob, chapter three.
	</p>
	<p>
		The lord of the vineyard has an olive tree, but it&apos;s dying.
		He&apos;s vexed by this, so he chops off the dead and dying branches and has his servant burn them.
		He also chops off the still-good branches, and plants them elsewhere on his land.
		Again, I didn&apos;t look into it, but I&apos;m assuming you can just plant the branches and they&apos;ll sprout into new trees.
		This sort of behaviour isn&apos;t found in all types of trees, but it is found in some, such as willows.
		He also has the servant go out and cut branches off wild olive trees and graft them onto the now-branchless tree.
		He&apos;s separated the good branches from the tree in hopes to preserve what he can, but he also wants to save the tree itself if possible.
		So the servant does this, and they check back later.
	</p>
	<p>
		They find the wild branches have grown &quot;tame&quot; olives.
		I thought nothing of this at first, thinking it only meant the olives were from this domestic tree, not that the olives were somehow different.
		But then they go check on the planted branches.
		Two of the branches are now growing this &quot;tame&quot; fruit.
		The third is growing some tame fruit, but some wild fruit as well.
		So ... what&apos;s going on here?
		There are tame and wild olives, and they&apos;re different from one another.
		The wild branches are growing tame fruit, but one of the tame branches is also growing wild fruit.
		If these are different types of olive trees, that&apos;s not how biology works.
		The branches should be growing the type of olives of the tree they came from.
	</p>
	<p>
		Later, the wild olives have completely taken over.
		All four trees are growing nothing but wild olives, except now, they&apos;re not being called &quot;wild&quot; any more.
		They&apos;re being called &quot;evil&quot;.
		So you&apos;ve got four trees growing &quot;evil olives&quot; that are not usable by the master of the vineyard for no disclosed reason.
		The master is ready to cut down and burn all four trees, but the servant stops him and claims that the evil fruits come from the wild branches having taken over.
		These wild branches, of course, don&apos;t explain why the three smaller trees are growing evil olives, as those trees are the branches of the tame tree and thus don&apos;t have any wild branches attached to them.
		So the master cuts off the wild branches and grafts those onto the smaller trees, to preserve their roots, because he also cuts off the smaller trees&apos; branches to graft onto the main tree the smaller ones were cloned from.
	</p>
	<p>
		At about this time, they start calling the tame fruit the &quot;natural&quot; fruit.
		That makes no sense, because obviously, the wild ones are the natural ones; the tame fruits are less natural.
		I guess the rules are bent because this is a prophesy using metaphors, but when you obscure the meaning of your prophesies, they become meaningless because you can simply claim them to mean or not mean whatever you want based on what later actually happened.
	</p>
	<p>
		I wasn&apos;t sure I was going to write anything about this chapter.
		It was a bizarre story, but neither discussed the ways of Jehovah nor made some terrible claim about morality, so my thoughts on it don&apos;t belong in my <a href="/en/religion/scripture/Mormon.xhtml">thoughts on the Book of Mormon</a>.
		Once I read that there were evil olives though, I just had to write about the story though, so I put my summary here in my journal instead.
	</p>
	<p>
		I needed to get four bible chapters read for tomorrow morning at church, so I needed to decide upon which version of the bible to use.
		I can&apos;t read Hebrew, so I can&apos;t read the original, and have to instead read one of the many translated-to-English versions.
		But which one?
		The King James Version seems like an obvious choice due to being old enough to fall outside of copyright here in my own country, but separate laws encumber it in the United Kingdom.
		It might be better to use a version unencumbered everywhere.
		So I did a Web search for public domain bibles, and the main result to come up was the World English Bible.
		It turns out it was translated in the modern day, so it uses modern English, but the translators specifically waved their copyright over it.
		They keep their trademark over the name &quot;World English Bible&quot;, meaning you can&apos;t modify the book and still call it that, but that just prevents fraud, misrepresentation, and whatnot.
		I wouldn&apos;t want someone distributing modified versions of my works and claiming them to be the originals either.
		So that&apos;s the version I&apos;m going to be going with for my Sunday school scripture study, and it&apos;s probably the version I&apos;ll use when I go back and read the full bible to analyse it in its entirety.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="vasectomy">
	<h2>Vasectomy aftermath</h2>
	<p>
		I was planning to wait until all visible signs of the vasectomy had healed, but I have no idea how ling that&apos;s going to take.
		I&apos;ve still got visible signs of a mystery wound I had on my belly that&apos;s been there for probably over a year now, so full healing clearly takes time.
		I&apos;ve been feeling pretty good for a few days though, so I guess I&apos;ll talk about it now.
	</p>
	<p>
		The first thing I noticed was that a primal part of me seemed to be gone after the operation.
		Even on the walk home, it was gone, and it was such a relief.
		I mentioned a while back that I&apos;d found a song that stirred this primal part I didn&apos;t know at the time I had, and that part of me scared me a bit.
		I didn&apos;t like that part of me, and it conflicted with the entire rest of my being.
		This part of me wanted my family tree to continue, even if not though me specifically.
		A sibling would do, and the narrative of the song threatened that, stirring that primal part.
		It threatened that the listener would have to take on the responsibility.
		I sang that song most of the way home though, with no effect.
		I didn&apos;t feel that part of me die like when I felt <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span> die, but it was just mysteriously gone.
		My guess was and still is that because my brain understood the implications of a vasectomy, that part of my mind just gave up.
		It was wonderful.
		I doubt I&apos;ll be plagued by it again.
	</p>
	<p>
		Since then, I&apos;ve felt more comfortable in my own skin.
		I feel less threatening.
		The most horrible and immoral thing a person can do is to create another person, and the vasectomy set my timer.
		When it goes off, I&apos;ll no longer be capable of reproduction.
		For all I know, I may already not be capable, though I really wouldn&apos;t risk it at this point even if I had a long-time girlfriend.
		It&apos;d be safer to wait a bit longer, then get tested.
		I also feel a bit girlier.
		This could be because I was being bound to masculinity by that same primal part of me, which would have been seeking a female.
		Or, it could be that I went to the clinic in full drag, getting no negative comments, and have been attending church weekly in half drag.
		I&apos;m getting more comfortable shunning the stupid gender-based norms of society, and my feeling less manly might have nothing to do with the vasectomy.
		Who even knows.
		But it&apos;s been nice.
	</p>
	<p>
		The one negative aspect of the vasectomy has been its effect on my orgasms.
		While I detested that primal part of me I mentioned above, I still made use of it when horny.
		In order to get a good orgasm, I have to tap into primal parts of my mind.
		I&apos;ve found no other way.
		I&apos;ve been a horrible person as of late though, and had been tapping into that part I detested.
		With that part of me now either dormant or (hopefully) gone entirely, I can&apos;t tap into it any more, not matter how hard I try.
		Which is a very good thing, but inconvenient.
		I&apos;ve had to re-learn how to use other primal parts of my mind for the same purpose, something I used to do all the time.
		So now I&apos;m back to normal and my orgasms are back to normal.
		I don&apos;t know why I&apos;d started focussing on that part of me, but I never should have.
		I was probably nourishing it and causing it to grow.
		What would have happened if I&apos;d continued down that road?
		Would that terrible part of me overcome my empathetic, caring side?
		I can only hope my empathetic side would have overcome the reproductive side, but I can&apos;t know what would happen for sure.
		I&apos;m safe now though.
		That side of me appears to be gone now, and even if it should resurface, I&apos;ve had the necessary tool it&apos;d cause damage with surgically disabled.
		I made the right choice when it mattered most, and nothing will ever take that from me.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="work">
	<h2>Work</h2>
	<p>
		I got assigned to work the front register today.
		That was exciting.
		I didn&apos;t have to deal with the drive-through!
		A bit later though, the head manager assigned one of our new employees to shadow me.
		I wouldn&apos;t actually mind that, aside from the fact that it makes me think that&apos;s <strong>*why*</strong> I was assigned to work the front register.
		If I&apos;m right and that&apos;s why, it means I&apos;m not going to be working the front register often, as we don&apos;t usually have someone in need of training, so I&apos;ll be shoved back onto the drive-through register soon, if not tomorrow.
	</p>
	<p>
		This isn&apos;t the first time they&apos;ve had someone shadow me on a register, but I usually get shadowed on the drive-through register.
		On the lobby register, it&apos;s a bit different, and my shadow ended up getting a little hands-on soon.
		It&apos;s the sort of thing that wouldn&apos;t work on the drive-through register due to space constraints.
		So, because they wanted to show initiative, I put them on the register and I acted as a shadow, pointing out what the needed to do.
		It ended up basically being a full-on training session, which I don&apos;t think was the head manager&apos;s intent.
		Still, head manager thanked me for it later.
		They realised it sped up their learning.
	</p>
	<p>
		Later, the head manager left, because business had wound down.
		Only three of us remained, and there was hardly anything to do.
		The shift leader ended up showing me how to do some of the paperwork, which normally only the bosses do.
		That was interesting, though mostly because the alternative was to stand there and get nothing done, which is never fun.
		For some reason, I get the subtle feeling I might be being worked into a shift leader position, seeing as I&apos;m learning a bit of the paperwork and I&apos;ve been authorised to perform cash drops for a while.
		At first, I was only supposed to drop cash from my own register, but the head manager started having me drop cash from other employees&apos; registers too occasionally.
		Previously, I didn&apos;t want such a position, as I&apos;m trying to get out of here and I didn&apos;t want to leave the head manager high and dry right after the trained a new shift leader.
		What a waste of their effort, right?
		But screw that.
		They&apos;ve screwed me over enough times that if an opening comes, I&apos;ll try to take it.
		Not to mess them up, but to add to my experience and to add to my résumé.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
